It's Rico Daley. I'm Adam Clark Estes. Over the past few weeks, as the Omicron variant

has spread in the United States, it's been harder and harder to figure out how to test

for COVID in this new era.

The testing situation is definitely pretty bad. Basically, we have a perfect storm when

it comes to testing in the U.S. You know, lines to go to PCR appointments. You can wait

hours and hours and hours and then wait days and days and days to get results. So basically

those results are useless if you want to use them in order to go somewhere.

And then the White House and test manufacturers just haven't been prepared for the amount

of tests that we would need because of this new variant. So pharmacies are sold out or

they've limited how many tests you can actually buy. And then there are opportunists and

price gougers buying excess tests and selling them for much higher prices. And then there's

the FDA which has just been pretty slow at actually improving new rapid tests which means

we just don't have that many test manufacturers to rely on in the first place. So the situation

is pretty dire.

One of the most contentious questions is whether or not rapid tests work against Omicron.

And the answer is they do work sort of and you have to really understand what a rapid

test is and how it's different from a PCR test in order to make the best use of them.

But in the fact that we're still trying to figure out the science behind the Omicron

variant. And you have a lot of very confused and frustrated folks. But Recoz Rebecca

Hyowell has been talking to experts and she's here to explain when and how we should be

using tests to make our way through the Omicron world.

Public health experts say the best test is the test you can get. And even though there

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